Marketing

Products

Twitter has filed for an IPO, it announced on its own Twitter feed.

The S-1 filing has been long-awaited. It will give us a first glimpse of the real financial numbers behind the micro-blogging company. S-1 IPO filings with the SEC require that the company disclose its historic and current revenues, profits and balance sheet holdings, prior to selling stock to the public.

We’ve confidentially submitted an S-1 to the SEC for a planned IPO. This Tweet does not constitute an offer of any securities for sale.

Twitter has clearly grown into a huge business - it's expected to do more than $500 million in revenues this year and has taken more than $1 billion in funds from investors - and the rumors and chatter swirling around the company had reached fever pitch.

We noted earlier today that Wall Street and other observers all seemed to be behaving as if an IPO was expected.

Months after becoming Twitter's new finance chief, Mike Gupta began talking to investment banks about handling the company's initial public offering, according to the San Francisco Chronicle. Gupta has a previous relationship with Morgan Stanley and Goldman Sachs, with whom he worked at Zynga. Jared Keller, a freelance reporter, says Goldman is leading the underwriting.

The IPO filing is currently "confidential," according to the tweet. Confidential IPOs are favored by companies that have less than $1 billion in annual revenue:

Filing as an emerging-growth company requires less paperwork, including submitting just two years (rather than the usual three) of financial statements to the SEC. What's more: Every bit of the filing, including correspondence about it, is kept out of the eyes of the media, competitors, and the investment community until the company decides to make it public (no later than 21 days before the IPO presentation series, known as a roadshow).

What are your thoughts? Will this be an advantage for the long-term growth and expansion of Twitter? You can get in touch with us by mentioning #ALJTMedia on Twitter, leaving a comment on our Facebook, Google+ or LinkedIn page, or writing a comment below.

About the Author

From the small, to the large, Lewis has tackled and developed a vast selection of projects since he started developing over 8 years ago. Lewis has the ability to program in over 25 languages from the well-known; PHP, Java, C and Objective-C to the less well-known; RDFa, Sparql and Maude. For any queries regarding the realisation and development of your project, Lewis will be your primary contact. Outside of work, Lewis has a passion for films, music and he’s also a bit of a Disney geek.